I'm having problems loading Type 1 fonts into Windows XP. I loaded ATM 4.1 light and get the following error message when trying to load the fonts through it: 'Cannot activate font <fontname>. The font files are invalid.'<br /><br />I've removed ATM 4.1 from my computer and ran the ATM 4.1 light updater to fix the registry problem, but now get the following error message when trying to load the fonts through the windows font folder: 'Unable to install the <fontname> font. File "D:\fontname___.pfm is either invalid or damaged"' <br /><br />So I'm thinking that the registry is not completely fixed as it seems the .pfm files are not being associated properly. I've tried re installing windows and that did nothing. I would really prefer not to have to re format the hard drive and start from scratch as I already had to do that with this brand new Dell laptop due to issues with MS Office. I guess that's my worst case scenario. I also have Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, and Acrobat Pro 8.0 on the computer. I don't think any of those would be causing my problems, but I mention it in case might. <br /><br />Does anyone have any ideas of how I can fix this problem? Thanks, Tom

Have you considered the possibility that the font files are, in fact, invalid? XP and W2K are a lot more picky about fonts than previous Windows OSs and will reject dodgy fonts. Does this affect all your fonts or just some? Were they free fonts downloaded from the net? If so, they may well be badly pirated copies or just badly made amateur efforts. I've not heard before of the registry fix not working, so I wouldn't place my suspicions there, especially since you reinstalled Windows. Can you load these fonts on other PCs?

In addition to Dominic's comments, are both the .pfm and associated
.pfb files in the same folder that you're installing from?

There are MANY older Type 1 font files, including some from reputable
quality vendors, that XP balks at. They can often be repaired by
passing them through something like Transtype or FontLab (just opening
them and saving them). There are some fonts whose names need to be
changed because of length or the presence of invalid characters.

Thanks for the quick responses. I failed to mention that the fonts are legit, and to be sure there were no problems with the files I installed them on another computer with XP and had no problems. I also downloaded a free font from fontshop.com and had the same problem. I really only have two font sets that I need to install (Helvetica and TheSans), but the problem is occuring with anything I try to install.

I just reloaded ATM Light 4.1, rebooted, same error message I mentioend earlier....

And when I try to install it through the Windows font folder I get the same message from that approach that I mentioned earlier.

Trying it both ways, when I open the directory where the fonts are, whether it's the d: drive or a folder on my hard drive where I also have them, ATM and Windows pulls them up in the list to be added, but then when I select all of them and hit ok, it gives me the error code for every different font I try to load (plain, italics, bold, caps, etc.)

I'm not sure I'm going to find a solution, but I really do appreciate the feedback.

I just reloaded ATM Light 4.1, rebooted, same error message I mentioned earlier....

And when I try to install it through the Windows font folder I get the same message from that approach that I mentioned earlier.

Trying it both ways, when I open the directory where the fonts are, whether it's the d: drive or a folder on my hard drive where I also have them, ATM and Windows pulls them up in the list to be added, but then when I select all of them and hit ok, it gives me the error code for every different font I try to load (plain, italics, bold, caps, etc.)

I'm not sure I'm going to find a solution, but I really do appreciate the feedback.

Can you install OT and TT fonts okay? If you just need to use the T1 fonts in the Adobe apps, you could install them in the Adobe fonts folder, but at the moment I'm guessing that you're looking at a reinstall of Windows.

Was this ever resolved? This suddenly and mysteriously started happening on my Win2k3 Server machine. The fonts are definitely good, direct off the ol' ATM Deluxe CD I get the same error. I'm baffled and in a former life I was an Adobe Type Support Tech...????

I can't install OT either. I don't have a TT to try. I tried repairing/re-installing XP without completely removing it, but it didn't work. My thought now is to try to set up a partition on my hard drive, install a clean version of XP to that, load my fonts, move all my data files, remove the current XP and then remove the partition on the drive. So to answer the last question, no it hasn't been resolved....

I removed 4.1 after it went wacky (which happened sometime after installing Win2k3 SP2). I just uninstalled SP 2 after deleting every reference to PFM and PFB in the reg and (while just about everything else broke) Type 1 fonts were installing again (despite claiming they were corrupt as I installed). Tried the steps that seemed to be working previously to my satisfaction (installed 4.1 and Type 1 fonts were working) installed SP2 and boom, invalid or damaged messages..

My next move when I have time is to remove SP2 again, not install any ATM at all and see if I can keep it working through the SP2 install and the associated bevy of massive reinstalls required after pulling it out. (Oh, and I did along the way try the ATM fix reg entry, but it has yet to shake anything loose at all).

Well, I realized on of the other things that happened when I rolled back to pre-SP2, was my video drivers died. So, finally it dawned on my to take the basic troubleshooting step of VGA mode and boom, type 1 fonts installing again. Never believe the error message I suppose.

I haven't reinstalled ATM yet, but I might as well, now that I can remove it and restore the windows registry entries blindfolded.

Anyway, rolled my video drivers waaaayyyyyy back to the last set issued by HP for this machine, and those are working.
Some of the basics of the failure case:

I re-formatted the hard drive, loaded XP and started loading the misc. drivers I got from Dell's website. I go to the video driver and thought maybe I should load the fonts first. Nah, I went ahead and loaded the nVidia driver. I tried to load the fonts. Wouldn't work. So I uninstalled the nVidia driver and presto the fonts loaded no problems. So I re-loaded the nVidia driver and the fonts wouldn't come up in any of the programs I use (Word, Quark, etc.). I can see them in the fonts folder, but when I double click on them I can an error message (__.PFB was not a valid font file). Remove nVidia and the fonts work fine, but my monitor perforamnce is horrible.

So nVidia is clearly the problem. I went to nVidia's website to see if I could download a driver from them and they only have "partner certified drivers" available. I tried the ones listed for Adobe, but they didn't work.

I would most humbly recommend that you contact nVidia and complain to them. You have some fairly convincing evidence that their driver and/or accompanying "added value" (ha ha) software is mucking around in the system somewhere where it shouldn't be!

On the Dell site on the download page for the video drivers there should be a link in the upper right that says "Other Versions" that will lead you to a list of past drivers.

This is not fun at all, but I think your best bet is to uninstall the nvidia drivers you have now, and start at the oldest and work forward until it breaks again. The safest way to do this is to add/remove programs on the nvidia drivers and restart each time you load a new set (I confess I'm not always very careful about that process, but evidently I just love increasing my frustration index to the maximum tolerably level).

If absolutely none of the drivers provided by Dell solve the problem, you'll likely have to go hunting around the net for even older drivers. Like I said, the version that ended up working for me was pretty far back there and just happened to be the most recent provided by HP (since this machine is several years old they apparently stopped updating them).

In the meantime I suppose we both should shoot a mail to nvidia (though they tend to have little interest in supporting integrated or vendor supplied video cards vs. their own retail products). Understandably, that is part of the deal. They sell the cards to the integrator at wholesale becuase the integrator is supposed to carry the support costs (kind of like when PhotoDeluxe or some odd consumer product is bundled with every wacky scanner and camera on the market). So far so good on my old drivers, and I just discovered they have "windowshade" like functionality in addition to single click monitor moves in the title bar, which is sweet...

Start with the laptop model and drill down. That will get you to:
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/previousversions.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&SystemID=W RK_NBK_PNT_P4_M4300&releaseid=R191014&vercnt=5&deviceid=13675&formatcnt=1&releasetype=DRVR &servicetag=&catid=-1&libid=6&impid=-1&osl=en&os=WW1

Which has 4 available downloads.

Also, Nvidia techinically doesn't list my card either, these are integrated chipsets and they expect HP/Dell who-ever to support and provide drivers for them.

I suspect (and can't be sure since I don't see the machines) that the 3600 in a laptop is being called a 360M since the link for Thomas's laptop model lead to the 360M. Probably worth a call to Dell to find out (and who knows they might have other drivers they can direct you to).

Probably both nVidia and Dell. Also, it's kind of funny that the "Partner Certified" drivers didn't work, but as I recall any fonts that were already installed were working in my apps and I didn't notice a problem until I went to try to add additional fonts, so it is possible the "certification" process missed the step of adding a Type 1 font (or since our Type 1's are destined to be replaced with the new open type fonts, Type 1 confirmation wasn't part of the process at all). I think all 4 vendors involved (including MS) should have some interest in making this work and Win 2k3 SP2 did include a new version of atmfd.dll and atmlib.dll from Adobe, so somebody, somewhere is still in this code.

I can't say this is the strangest video issue I've ever seen, but it is definitely up there. Since the failure blames the font, the code must be assuming any error at all while adding the font is related to the font files. When I was troubleshooting this and looking through some of the dev docs I did notice the GDI.exe is tied to the font activation process (a very old font related hot fix in Win2k included atmfd.dll, atmlib.dll and dern near all of the GDI components), and that is what first kick started my brain back to the basic TS step of checking for a video conflict. So much for the Hardware Abstraction Layer I suppose. I'm sure things would be worse without it (think Win 3.1), but I do wish it was little more robust in its defense against driver related weirdnesses.

Gary....you da man! Needless to say when I rolled back to an earlier driver everything works fine. When I first went to Dell to get the drivers I entered my service tag number rather than looking for them by the computer model. Via the service tag I only got one driver to download (ver. A06). From the link Gary sent I go the four he found. All of them worked fine so I went with the latest version (A05). Without your recommending I try a different video driver I would still be baffled b this. Thanks Gary!

Thanks for working this out. It helped me with the same problem on a Dell Precision M70 laptop on which the IT people installed a new operating system after a crash (XP). I went to the Dell Drivers site you indicated, navigated to the M70 video drivers, downloaded the old one there (2006), and installed it.

After running the driver's .exe install program, I also had to 'roll back' (rather than 'update') the driver using the display tools in the control panel.

Now my Type 1 fonts install without a .pfm error, and I'm able to complete the projects I was half-way through.

hmmm.....guys i've read through the post, so it seems like the solution is to roll back to an older driver. but i just bought my laptop recently and it comes with a nVidia 9200m GS. It's a really new model, the nvidia sites doesnt provide the drivers, and there's no old drivers to roll back!

You should see a slider. You can reduce acceleration, or disable it
completely. Worth a try, it often works around bugs in video drivers
(at a cost in performance; if it is off, you may as well have the
cheapest generic card).

Another option is to check windows update (using the custom rather than express option) to see if there have been any MS WHQL drivers released for the card. I took a look at the HP site to see if they had any drivers for this chipset (since Samsung didn't), but no luck.

You might be stuck for a while, but such is life on the bleeding edge...

Unfortunately, this problem really requires some coordination between Microsoft and your video card manufacturer. Adobe is not involved in providing the software for installation of Type 1 fonts.

What I do suspect, though, is that the video driver is somehow trying to accelerate the rendering of fonts, but only supports TrueType, and in the process of intercepting the font rendering is somehow shutting down full system support of Type 1.

Anyway, contact both Microsoft and your video card supplier (and if the video card was bundled with your computer, your computer manufacturer). This is truly a high severity bug on the part of one or more of them.